Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The condition for accelerating the schedule of sale is the sustainability of the Irish position in the markets. If one were to dump a lot of Irish paper on the markets, the effect would be that interest rates would go up and, therefore, nobody would ask to do that. That is not the position. Currently, we are not under pressure to accelerate but it is in a provision and it would involve a dialogue between the officials in Frankfurt and Dame Street to decide what that would be. It would not be a political decision. I stress that it is not all downside. Because of the increase in nominal value of the paper, a capital gains element comes into the calculations, which offsets the loss on the coupon.